Miege hits from outside to stop Railers

The Bishop Miege Stags opened up with guns blazing from the outside to bury the Newton Railers 69-35 Saturday night in the finals of the 42nd Newton Invitational at Ravenscroft Gym.

Miege wins the NIT title for the sixth straight year. The Stags outscored Newton 36-6 from 3-point range.

“That’s a special team,” Newton coach Randy Jordan said. “We knew they could drive it, so we had to make up our mind what we could stop. We wanted to stop the layups, but not have Des(iRay Kernal) possibly get in foul trouble trying by helping on the penetration. We tried to keep one foot in the lane on the weak side. We kept them away from the rim, but then they kicked it for a three. With that team, you have to pick your poison. I thought in the second half, we settled down and tried to run something. In the first half, we were too shell shocked. We got away from everything we practiced.”

“We shot the ball pretty well tonight,” Miege coach Terry English said. “We passed the ball well. We were unselfish. We made the passes to make the wide-open shot and happened to knock some of them down. If we’re shooting well, we’re pretty good. We were pressing at the beginning, but we started playing man-to-man the whole night.”

“We have a lot of depth and play well together,” English said. “We are young. That’s the good thing about it. Most of them are back next year. We’re just coming together. We struggled at the beginning of the season. We played the no. 1 team from Iowa (Dowling Catholic), then the no. 1 team from Missouri. We played Aquinas twice and split with them. And we played McPherson and beat them. These kids haven’t had a lot of rest.”

Jada Berry led Newton with 10 points.

“We had some good looks, but nothing would go down,” Jordan said. “It probably wouldn’t have been enough to win, but we got some good looks. The same thing happened last night. We still have to guard. The problem with Miege is if you guard one thing, they will come back with something else.”

Newton led 3-2 in the first minute of play. Miege started hitting shots to make a 14-0 run. Layups by Berry and Savannah Simmons got Newton back into the game at the end of the quarter, 14-7.

Newton’s offensive woes continued into the second quarter as Miege kept pushing its advantage. A Courtney Harms trey with eight seconds remaining in the half put the Stags ahead 32-14.

Miege opened the second half with a pair of treys for a 6-2 run. A Johnni Gonzalez layup at the buzzer put the Stags up 51-27.

Johnni Gonzalez opened the fourth quarter with a trey. Miege got the running clock going midway in the quarter. Miege played its bench for most of the quarter. Newton soon followed. Megan Bartel hit a trey just before the final buzzer for Newton.

“I was disappointed in the first half.” Jordan said. “In the second half, we played harder and smarter. To beat a team like that, you have to do everything right. We didn’t in the first half. We didn’t box out. They got to the loose balls. That shouldn’t happen. In the second half, we did more things right and executed. Hopefully, we can play another game like this and put two good halves together.”

“This is one of our toughest stretches,” English said. “We play Blue Valley North Monday. No rest. If we can win that one (Miege won 62-46), we are going to be hard to beat after that.”

Newton returns to play at 6 p.m. today at Salina Central to end the first half of AV-CTL I play. Central is 10-3, coming off a third-place finish at the Salina Invitational.

“We can’t have a lull,” Jordan said. “We’re a year older. We’re in a tough stretch right now. That’s what I told them. We can’t hang our heads. We have to look at the positives. We were ranked fourth and worked our way up to take second. We matured. This tournament prepares us for the (final) stretch of the season and the post-season.”